Arduino Wine Cellar

Development Boards Arduino
1

I know someone described a similar project before (kegerator) but the link with his description is gone.

My last experience with home electronics is from the 80s, building audio amps, disco strobes, etc. and I really know very little about microcontrollers or how things are done these days (I do know how to program in Java, C, etc.).

The project I’m looking to start with is taking a regular fridge and turning into a wine fridge. This means I want to maintain fairly high humidity and temperature in the high 50s (F) to low 60s.

Items I’ve figured I need are:

Arduino Uno

SHT15 Breakout

Two relays

A humidifier

A fridge

There seem to be some arduino based boards that already have relays on them but they seem like a bit of an overkill.

What next?

How do I hook up the SHT15 to Arduino? how do I use arduino to control the relays?

Is there a way to connect a phone module with a prepaid sim to the arduino so it can call me if something seems wrong?

Any responses will be much appreciated, I really don’t want to spend money on a fancy looking piece of wine snob furniture.

2

GreenCo

I would suggest that you first google for some arduino tutorials. The arduinowebsite (http://www.arduino.cc) ) has quite a few. If you still feel uncomfortable you can get the very inexpensive “getting started” arduino book from Amazon or makershed.

Concerning the SHT15 and since arduino is based on “Wiring” the following link should help you get started:

http://wiring.org.co/learning/basics/hu … sht15.html

Concerning the relay take a look at those:

http://www.arduino.cc/playground/upload … relays.pdf

http://www.instructables.com/id/Connect … o-Arduino/

Finally there is a sparkfun module that provides GSM functionality and is probably what you need for the alerts (what can go wrong with a wine cellar though?):

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/produc … ts_id=9607

Best

N

3

Hi N,

Thanks for your answer.

The question with wine cellars is what can’t go wrong :slight_smile:

  1. Power outage.

  2. Fridge dies.

  3. Humidifier out of water/clogged/died.

  4. Thermostat busted.

  5. Relay died.

And if one of these happens during a very hot or very cold day, your wine can be toast…

Cheers,

GG